A color photographic material generally contains a color coupler in at least one of the photographic layers. By color developing the color photographic material, the color coupler reacts with an oxidized aromatic primary amine color developing agent to form a dye such as indophenol, indoaniline, indamine, azomethine, phenoxazine, phenazine. The dye formed by this reaction forms an image.
In the development of color photographic materials a bleach step, fix step and wash step are usually performed after the color development step. Recently, the bleach step and fix step have generally been performed in one bath called a "blix step or bath".
After image-exposure, the color photographic material is subjected to the coloring development process as described above. The development process forms dye images corresponding to the image-exposure. Dyes should not be formed at the areas that have not been color developed.
However, in the color development step and/or the bleach step of the development process for color photographic materials, the areas which are not color developed are colored to a certain extent by color stains.
Hereinafter, the color stain occurring in areas which were not color developed in the development step for a color photographic material will be referred to as "processing stain".
Processing stain occurs at the non-image areas of a color photographic material, i.e., the areas of the color photographic material which should be primarily colorless or white. Accordingly, these processing stains greatly reduce the quality of dye images formed.
The processing stain is particularly likely to occur in a bleach step. The discovery of a color photographic material which can prevent the occurrence of processing stain has been sought by those skilled in the art.
In addition to processing stain, it is known that dye image formed imagewise by such processings after go through various changes with the passage of time. For example, yellow colored images tend to increase in image density with the passing of time. This disrupts the color balance with other colors (magenta and cyan), thereby greatly deteriorating the quality of the dye images (hereinafter, this tendency will be referred to as "color increase with the passage of time").
The discovery of color photographic materials which produce color images causing no color increase with the passage of time has also been sought by those skilled in the art.